


This Is How It Ends

by kitsuchi (genusshrike)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-10-06
Updated: 2003-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-08 23:28:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genusshrike/pseuds/kitsuchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginny wants to let go, but still he haunts her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is How It Ends

The dress was dark blue, low-cut with spaghetti straps. It was a good thing Ginny wasn't at home. Her mother never would've let her out wearing such a thing. But then, her mother never would've let her out to do what she wanted to do. Her mother would know. The teachers, who _had_ let her out, didn't know. They didn't know what she wore either, and that pleased Ginny.

It was a muggle outfit, terribly inappropriate, but it thrilled Ginny. The danger pleased her, in wearing something so revealing, and she knew if she wore it, she would be the sort of person who went out to visit a lover, the sort of person who loved. Even so, she grabbed a shawl, light blue and shimmering, to wrap around her as she left the room.

She stopped briefly as she passed through the main room of The Three Broomsticks, to blush at a compliment and a wink from Madame Rosmerta. She pulled on her pigtails nervously passing some of the less savoury customers, and stepped out into the moonlight. It was going to be one hell of an evening, and she would enjoy it.

She was rather self-concious though, trotting down Hogsmeade's main road. She'd pulled her shawl ever tighter around her. Finally though, she got to the cottage she was heading for, and she let it lossed with a sigh. Ginny smile at the house, and it seemed to smile back at her. She walked up the flower-trimmed path, and pulled the string outside the door. She heard, softly inside, a bell jangling.

The door opened quickly to a red-faced Cho. She was looking even prettier than usual, in a flattering cheongsam. Ginny leant in to kiss Cho on the cheek, and together, they went inside. They had dinner by candlelight, and Cho liked her dress. The dinner was delicious, and so was Cho. Ginny thought, with a tiny flurry of _something_ inside her, that tonight might be the night she let go.

But the night went on, and Ginny found herself doing nothing more risky than snuggling up to Cho, in a small bed. The older girl, Ginny was sure, was asleep. She never seemed to have trouble sleeping - although she'd admitted it'd been a year before she got a decent night's sleep after Cedric died.

Ginny sighed, and rubbed her nose in Cho's black hair. She'd grown it long, after she gave up Quidditch. Ginny thought that was sad - Cho had always looked so happy flying. But she never told Ginny why she'd stopped.

Ginny yawned then, stretching out her legs. Eventually, she fell asleep.

 

_Dark dark dark black hair tall, far taller than her with green green hungry eyes and he grabbed her and pushed her against the wall and kissed her and kissed her and bit and levered her just right to unzip the back of her dress and undo her bra. His tongue and his teeth kept on lower and lower and his hands going lower and lower and her moaning and him stopping and grinning up at her and then it was all green light and she screamed._

 

Ginny's eyes opened wide, and Cho rocked the red-head in her arms. She kissed her softly, whispering comfort in her ears. Ginny clutched Cho even closer, as she might hug a doll, and squeezed her eyes shut.

"It's okay," Cho whispered, into Ginny's hair. "It was just a bad dream."

Ginny whimpered, and pressed her face closer to Cho's bare chest. Bad deam, very bad dream. It wasn't all a bad dream, surely? Not this, too? Ginny shivered.

Cho slipped out of bed, Ginny still half in her arms, Ginny reached out, still clutching. She let go when she remembered being clutched.

"We'll go get you some water, 'kay?" Cho said, in a soft voice that made Ginny want to forget. She nodded in return, tears running down her face. She hadn't dreamt so badly in an age.

"Hey," Cho said. "It's okay, Ginny-baby. He can't hurt you any more." That only made Ginny cry the harder, till Cho kissed her, and then kissed her again. "It's okay," she said, into Ginny's ear, a whisper and a kiss at once, and Ginny let herself go.

Let herself go, until she came screaming again, with the green light in her eyes and Tom's hands on her arms.

She fell limp against Cho, to catch her breath and catch at the fear tight in her chest, even when she'd felt so good. Cho held her, the same way she'd always done, and the way, long ago, Ginny had imagined Tom holding her. Tom.

 

Ginny left Cho's cottage in the morning, after a warm breakfast. She kissed Cho goodbye at the door, and ignored the other girl's searching eyes. She knew she must look horrid. She'd dreamt of Tom, and the blue dress she'd arrived in no longer felt as gorgeous or as thrilling. She felt exposed, walking back up to The Three Broomsticks, and she ignored Madame Rosmerta's questions the same way she'd ignored Cho's, and collapsed in one of the seats. Madame Rosmerta came back with a Butterbeer, and Ginny drank it.

"Are you sure you're alright, dear?" Madame Rosmerta asked.

"No," Ginny said, her voice small and scared as a child, because really, she thought, she was still a child, and Cho's hands upon her hadn't been any different from Tom's, and Ginny hadn't felt any older. If she'd ever be older.

She'd thought that she'd left him behind, maybe just maybe, but she was the same as she'd ever been. A scared little girl.

She cried in Madame Rosmerta's arms, and, back at Hogwarts, burned the letter that arrived from Cho, staring into the fire to watch it crackle. They would come again, and again, and she'd burn them all. Eventually they stopped, and Ginny knew she was safe. Cho's love wasn't safe. No love like that was safe, and Tom's hands were still on her arms. And even though Lord Voldemort was gone, he would always be alive, younger, in Ginny's mind. Just like Ginny was dead, younger, in her mind.

And so it would go on.


End file.
